Artist Database

BEALS, Jessie Tarbox

Born

Hamilton, Ontario, 1870

Died

New York, United States, 1942

Biography synopsis

Beals lived in Canada until she was 17, when she moved to Williamsburg, Massachusetts to work as a teacher. In 1888 she won her first camera in a contest, and a few years later Beals supplemented her income by taking photographs. In 1897 she married Alfred Beals with whom she worked as an itinerant photographer in New England. Beals was one of the first woman staff photographers for the Buffalo Courier of Buffalo, New York in 1902. Two years later she was the first woman to gain press credentials to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. The following year the Beals moved to New York where they opened a photography studio. Beals' portraits were unique in that she deployed the sharp focus of news photographers. In 1917, after divorcing her husband, she opened Village Art Gallery in Greenwich Village where she began to photograph the streets and people, as well as the poor of New York City, particularly their children. In 1928 she moved briefly to California to photograph the wealthy of Hollywood, but eventually moved back to Greenwich Village where she lived until her death. Her work was included in major exhibitions in Toronto in 1921, and in Buffalo in 1922, and since her death has been included in several New York exhibitions. Beals also wrote poetry and published a book of poems, entitled "Songs of a Wanderer".